g pi it f’
Contract Law (Offer and Acceptance)
I will introduce you to 1 the basic concept of what a contract Is and 1 en Introduction to Contract formation and, we will focus on the principles of offer and Invitation to trent Now offer and acceptance together Is termed agreement, but our focus in this lecture will Ire no Introduction to contract and the concept of oiler and then contrasting it to the principle of invention to treat, Now, first starting with the basic concept of what a contract is, the layperson would of course say that it is an agreement between two or more persons but tlint Is whet will distinguish you the budding lawyer from the layperson, because throughout this series of lecturers you will hoar me tell you to go to source Now, in studying this or any other topic never•ever rely solely cm what n tutor said or Lecturer says or God forbid, what a fellow student says, or even what I may say to you, check for yourself from source, which for you m the low student of course means the experts, and by the experts i mean the academics and the court decisions. Yes, you must read the cases, and If legislation is involved what a particular act snys, now it means shot whatever we discuss here we will go to source, now then, “what is a suitable definition of a contract”? well If we were to go to the source for the answer the first response in my view Is from professor TrItyl, who says that “a contract is an agreement giving rise to obligations which are enforced or recognised by law”, Now he carries on by saying that the factor which distinguishes contractual from other legal obligations for example “Ton” is that they are based on the agreement of the contracting parties. Now Sir Frederick Pollock, for his part says that “a contract is a promise or a set of promises which the law will enforce” and of course not to be outdone we see, Sir William Anson saying, that “the law of contract may be provisionally described as that branch of the law which determines the circumstances in which a promise shall be legally binding on the person making it” so the starting point therefore we can see that the great minds of contract law are united not least that In the law of contract not all agreements will be an agreement that Is enforceable in law, So if we are dealing with a social arrangement for example, say I asked my son to wash my car, or if you are dealing with an illegal agreement so you and I agree that you will use my spare bedroom for the purposes of prostitution or if we’re dealing with an agreement that is contrary to public policy, so making an agreement which the law disapproves of, then such agreements unfortunately as much as I would like the income from the proceeds of the spare bedroom, will not be enforceable
It is the enforceability requirement which Is significant In determining what is a contract, now the three essential elements of a valid contract under the English law are, agreement meaning offer and acceptance, intention to create legal relations, and of course consideration Now by the end of this session we will have reviewed the contract element of agreement which is usually expressed In terms of offering acceptance. It is that meeting of the minds of those two parties the consensus addendum that meeting of the offer with the corresponding acceptance that constitutes the agreement So, our objective over this session are to know “what is on offer” and to be able to distinguish on offer from other forms of communication In particular “what is an invitation to treat”?. So we will know what is the correlation between offer and possibly acceptance and then what Is meant by an offer and of course considered in the context of invitation to treat, well an offer could be defined as a proposal or a promise by one person who is called the offeror In law, to enter Into a contract on a particular set of terms with the specific intention of being bound by that promise as soon as the person to whom the promises made called the offeree signifies his acceptance. Now that may sound